Definition of "violet" []

• Any of various low-growing herbs of the genus Viola, having short-spurred, irregular flowers that are characteristically purplish-blue but sometimes yellow or white. (noun)
• Any of several similar plants, such as the African violet. (noun)
• The hue of the short-wave end of the visible spectrum, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 380 to 420 nanometers; any of a group of colors, reddish-blue in hue, that may vary in lightness and saturation. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Not surprisingly, the word violet is derived from the flower of the same name via the French violette or viola, and is cognate with the Greek ion, from which the word iodine is derived."
• "One number of these is bent by the prism to where we see what we call the violet, another number to the place we call red."
• "There are red and white radishes; and the French have also what they call violet and black ones, of which the black are the larger."